Fallout: Equestria: Written in Sand

Chapter One: How I Died and Learned to Live With It

Survival.

That little voice in the back of your mind.

Shush now, can you hear it?

Of course you can.

Everything that has ever lived, is living and will live has heard it, hears it and will hear it.

No exceptions.

You can talk about duty. You can talk about honour. You can talk about fear and fury and faith. About promises. About vengeance. About justice. Love.

But the one thing that can galvanise somepony into action above all others is the Reaper's blade scything towards their neck.

Mostly, they duck and run.

The thing about ponies willing to die, to forsake their own survival, is that they seldom live to enjoy the things they martyred themselves for.

Never understood that, personally.

Besides, this is the Wasteland. There's nothing here worth dying for.

The caravan made its slow, cautious way across the poisoned landscape.

It was hardly an unimaginable occurrence. Plenty of travellers still made trips across the Equestrian Wasteland. But, year on year, the roads became more dangerous as the smaller settlements were overrun by raiders, abandoned by their occupants or simply had a poor season and starved to death when the next caravan didn’t show, the desperate survivors braving the desolation and scattering across the wastes.

This particular caravan was toiling its way south on the road out of New Appleloosa. There was only the one wagon, drawn by an old brahmin, and half-a-dozen ponies. Of the latter, four were leading the caravan, armed and watching the surroundings. Raiders and the local wildlife were an ever-constant danger in the Wasteland. They were well aware of the risks, but opportunities for caps were few and far between in any settlement, at least to those without something special to contribute. But the caravans always had a use for somepony with the nerve to hold a weapon. All they had to do, they were told, was to keep their eyes peeled and ears cocked.

But sometimes, vigilance isn’t enough to save you.

As the caravan passed the skeletal remains of a pre-war billboard, a metal sphere came sailing through a gap in the tangle of twisted metal. One guard noticed and cried out, throwing herself aside. The grenade bounced off the highway’s cracked surface with a click, bouncing twice to come to rest within feet of the wagon’s brahmin.

The grenade detonated, the blast knocking the brahmin down and peppering it with shrapnel. The pony riding on the wagon’s seat was thrown off, her shoulder cracking as she hit the unforgiving ground. The brahmin broke into a chorus of pained howling, punctuated with cursing.

The raiders emerged from their hiding places at the edges of the road, spraying gunfire at the guards. What they lacked in discipline and accuracy, they completely failed to make up for with enthusiasm, screeching taunts and threats at the startled guards.

The lead guard, toting a heavy rifle on a makeshift battle saddle, loosed a pair of shots that struck the first charging pony in the chest. He went down, tumbling to the ground, his weapon skittering away across the cracked tarmac. Before the guard could acquire another target, a shotgun blast caught her in the face, pulping her left eye. She staggered backwards, pawing at her ruined face until a volley of shots from the remaining bandits punched through her light barding. She fell down, coughing up droplets of blood that were lost in the spreading pool from the wounds in her chest.

One of the remaining guards, so young she was barely more than a filly, backed away from the approaching raiders, inexpertly firing her revolver. A second grenade was thrown in her direction. She tripped and fell as she panicked and tried to flee. Her revolver fell from her mouth as she screamed as the grenade came to rest just in front of her, hooves scrabbling at the ground, trying to escape. The grenade exploded, throwing her limp, broken body into the side of the wagon.

A unicorn guard toting a shotgun took one look at the bandits, turned tail and ran. In the chaos, nopony noticed him disappear into the thicket of gnarled, dead bushes at the edge of the road. A stray bullet caught him in the hindleg, knocking it out from under him and sending him tumbling to the ground. He lay still in the undergrowth, trying to stifle the sound of his pained gasping.

The last guard backed away from the approaching attackers, spraying fire from his telekinetically-held sub-machine gun. Two of the raiders were hit, screeching and swearing at him as they returned fire. The guard ducked around a fallen tree that lay across the road and started to reload, fumbling the action as a bullet clipped the log inches from his head. He never noticed the last raider galloping up behind him. With a low sweep, the guard’s hind legs were knocked out from under him by the lance wielded by the attacking pony. As he tried to scramble to his hooves, the lance was driven through his neck. He jerked and twitched his last, the magic field around his weapon sputtering out. Finally, he lay still.

I planted a hoof on the fallen pony's side. With a grunt, I tore my lance free, sending a spray of gore spattering across the ground. I casually tossed the lance upwards and caught it again in a more secure grip. I wiped the bloodied head on the fallen guard's body, leaving a red-brown smear across his green coat. The rest of the gang were whooping and cheering as they started looting the bodies on the ground, arguing over who'd gotten which kill. Good for them. Personally, I’d take first dibs at the wagon.

I trotted over to the wagon, lance held at the ready between my teeth. Unicorns had it it easy, with their magic. Real ponies had to deal with other ponies’ slobber whenever they wanted to trade weapons. I was a lucky pony… after a fashion. None of the gang were mad keen on hoof-to-hoof, preferring their guns and explosives. Me? I preferred it up close and personal. Anypony could pull a trigger.

The brahmin harnessed to the wagon was sobbing in pain as I passed it without a glance. Verdict was standing over its prone form, shoving a new magazine into her pistol. I heard the rapid banging of gunshots as she emptied her weapon into the stricken brahmin. Its howl told me she hadn't gone for the kill-shot. Verdict's cackle told me she wasn't planning to any time soon.

A cough near my hooves made me look down. The wagon-driver pony was weakly trying to get up, her foreleg bent at what looked like a painful angle. She became aware of me just as I raised a forehoof and slammed it into her head. She collapsed. I hit her twice more to be sure, hearing the crunch of her skull cracking under my hoof. She should've thanked me. The others would have killed her a lot more slowly than that.

I stepped around the back of the wagon, lance readied. I reared up and placed my hooves on the tailboard and almost fell back on my haunches when a head poked out from between the flaps of canvas. Without a second thought, I whipped the lance around, the jagged head ripping into the pony's neck. The pony went limp, letting out a pained gurgle. They started thrashing, forehooves pawing at the blood running down their chest.

I pulled on the lance, dragging the pony out from the wagon. They toppled onto the road surface as the lance head came free. I angrily kicked a hoof into the pony's head before giving the body a look-over. It was small. Too small to be an adult pony.

“Stupid foal,” I grunted under my breath.

“Aw fuck, you did it again.”

I growled on reflex. Spitting out the lance, resting it on an outstretched foreleg, I turned to snarl at who had spoken. “Fuck off, it startled me.”

“Pfft, you scaredy-pony. Shame, I was lookin’ forward to a new pet around camp.”

“Fuck off, Shears.”

The mare who'd rounded the corner of the wagon cackled at me, tossing her rust-brown mane back out of her eyes. She leant against the wagon's wheel, idly kicking at the body of one of the guards. “Well,” she said in that twisting-the-blade tone she loved to use. “Maybe ifsomepony else were to-”

She didn't finish that sentence, because I snatched up my lance and whipped it around, cracking the haft against her head. She staggered, smacking the other side of her head against the side of the wagon and falling to her knees. She let out a pathetic shriek and scrambled to her hooves. As she rose, she dipped her head to grab the shotgun hanging from the strap around her neck, but paused when I hefted my lance menacingly.

“Go on,” I spat around the length of wood in my mouth. “Go for it. I'll rip you in half.”

'Please, oh, please, go for it.'

For a moment, I thought she might. I watched her eyes dart between the bloody head of my lance and the grip of her shotgun. Just as she took a breath and dipped her head again, a third pony skidded to a halt in between us before she got badly hurt. Ember, our gang’s ‘leader’. “Break it up!” he roared at us, shoving aside my lance with one hoof. “Both of you! Or I’ll skin the pair of you!”

I snarled again, but I also lowered the lance. Fuck Ember. Seriously. We all knew the only reason I didn’t kill him and take over was because the others didn’t respect me like they did him. And they barely respected him at all.

Ember moved away. Shears leant in closer, making me recoil in disgust. “Next time, killjoy,” she whispered menacingly, before turning and walking away, snapping her tail at me. I ignored her and went back to the wagon. We both knew she couldn’t do a thing to me. Not since I’d given her the beating of a lifetime a while back. I was just itching for a rematch, and this time it’d end with my hooves on her neck, not by knocking her through a window.

I disregarded the first volley of gunfire, thinking that the others were shooting up the bodies some more. They did that. Fucking waste of ammo. It was when I heard Ember howl in pain that I looked around the corner of the wagon.

The old stallion was down on the tarmac, hooves scrabbling at a pair of bullet holes in his side. Verdict was sprawled on the ground not far away, missing half of her skull. The others were running around, yelling and firing their weapons in the air wildly.

'Oh great. They've gone crazy. -Er than they were already.'

That was my first thought. I didn't have time for a second before the next volley of shots flew down from the sky. I registered the snapping of ricochets from the tarmac beneath me, then an almighty blow to my side that knocked the wind out of me. I staggered, gasping for breath, my lance falling from my grip. I barely felt the pain in my flank or the feel of warm blood oozing out under my barding through the sudden, desperate need to breathe. I dropped to my knees, trying to suck in a breath that wouldn't come.

As I finally coaxed air into my lungs, the gunfire that had been ever-present in the background suddenly died away. I looked around again. The others were all down. Only Ember was still moving, reaching a shaking hoof towards his dropped weapon. His hoof came to rest on the rifle's casing before he passed out and went limp. I turned my head upwards and finally laid eyes on our attacker. A vaguely pony-shaped…  shape swooped through the air above me. It spun around and came back towards me, breaking into a steep dive.

I lowered my head and snatched up my lance. I reared up and threw it at the descending pegasus. It was, I'll admit, not the best throw. The pegasus made the slightest, totally needless, adjustment with one wing and kept coming. It did, however, buy me just enough time to dive aside, behind the wagon. I wasn't quite quick enough to avoid a bullet that clipped my hindleg, knocking me off-balance. I heard the pegasus pull out of his dive, almost feeling the beat of his wings above me as he regained altitude.

I scrambled into the back of the wagon, trying to hide. Fuck. Fucking feather-brains and their fucking wings. Unicorns, earth ponies, no problem. Line ‘em up and I’ll chop ‘em down. Pegasi, griffins? Cowards flew out of reach all the fucking time.

A crate beside my head suddenly exploded into splinters as a pair of shots penetrated the side of the wagon. I flinched as something wet spattered my face. I threw myself flat, knocking aside several boxes and scattering their contents across the floor. I scrambled as far towards the front of the wagon as I could, trying to make myself as small as possible.

'Okay, think, think, think. There has to be a way out of this.'

I twisted onto my back and watched the flaps. They were pushed aside and a head poked in. I grabbed the nearest box between my hooves and threw it. I was rewarded with a pained grunt and the head disappearing back through the flaps. Hooray. I had achieved more than the entire rest of the gang combined.

Another pair of shots punched through the heavy fabric, missing my head by inches. I flinched, trying to push myself down through the floor.

The pegasus thrust his head back through the flaps. He was wearing a fucking ridiculous hat. That was what I noticed first. The second thing was that said ridiculousness was only matched by the fearsomeness of the battle saddle he was wearing.

“Ah well,” I panted, feeling oddly calm about the whole situation, given the circumstances. “You can’t blame me for trying, right?”

The reply was cold and furious. “Ah reckon Ah can.” There was a metallic clicking as the battle saddle reloaded. “It’s muh policy.”

“Fu-”

I didn’t finish that sentence. Hay, I barely started it. A single bullet flew across the intervening space and hit me square in the skull.

I awoke.

Wasn’t expecting that.

I had a searing pain in my forehead and had blood dripping into my eyes.

Was expecting that. Wasn’t expecting to feel it.

There- uh. Pain. World… spinning. Can’t… word. Brain. Action. Think. That‘s word.

Face. Cold. Hard. Rough.

I was lying on the surface of the highway in a slowly-spreading pool of my own blood. The smell of it was thick in my nostrils.

Up. Get. Plan. Had. Do. Speed.

I managed to lift my head and take a look around. The pegasus had dragged me out of the wagon and tossed me onto the road. Bastard. I placed my front hooves ahead of me and pulled myself forward, feebly scrabbling at the ground behind me with my hind legs. I managed to reach the rear of the wagon. Then came the hard part. I braced my hooves on the tailboard and heaved myself upwards. A fierce burst of pain shot through my head and  I collapsed back onto the road surface with a whimper.

I must have blacked out for a moment. When I opened my eyes again, the pain in my head was visible. I swear I could see the entire world pulsing around me as the pain ebbed and flared.

I slowly pulled myself onto my haunches, painfully aware of the constant stream of blood down the side of head. I could feel it soaking into my coat and mane, matting the hair into twisted, gory clumps. I flinched and shook my head as a trickle ran into my eye. I sat there for a few moments, waiting for the pain to die down, just a little, before I threw myself at the wagon's tailboard.

I managed to get my front half into the wagon. With an effort that sent the pain in my head to new heights, I pulled myself forward, falling onto the floor of the wagon. With a moan that trailed off into a choked sob, I thrust my forehooves forward, caught purchase on the rough wooden planks and crawled forward – a yard’s distance that lasted for a thousand years.

My hoof clicked against the empty bottle that had contained the healing potion I’d downed just before the pegasus had poked his head through the flaps. There had to be another one here… somewhere. Who carried just one healing potion? This was a caravan, right? Trading and shit. They should have had hundreds of the things.

I weakly raised my head and looked around. There, just visible over the edge of a box: the neck of a glass bottle. It was only a few inches from my muzzle, but suddenly that seemed like just too far right now.

'Maybe I should just… close my eyes… just fo-… just for a moment…'

With a primal growl, I threw my head forward, gripping the neck of the bottle between my teeth. I fumbled my first few attempts to pull the cap off, eventually spitting the thing aside. I raised my head and chugged the potion. It made a pleasant burning sensation in my throat as it went down. Then I coughed and retched.

'That's not what… .'

I inspected the remainder of the liquid closely through the grey haze obscuring my vision. It was amber. Whiskey. Not a healing potion.

I let out a deranged chuckle. I was too weak to be angry.

I raised a shaking hoof to to the lip of the box the whiskey had been in and tipped it towards me. Various bottles and cans fell to the floor around me. I blearily moved my head to and fro, searching for a familiar one. There. That was either a healing potion or a… a… thing that looks like a healing potion. But isn’t.

As my vision darkened, I managed to raise the bottle and chug down the contents before passing out.

I awoke.

I grinned weakly.

'Fuck you, feather-brain,' I thought triumphantly. 'Next time, more bullets.'

The scent of blood and alcohol made my nose twitch.

A burst of adrenaline shot through me and I hastily lifted my head and looked around. As I pulled my head upwards, there was a brief feeling of stickiness, followed by pain as the half-dried blood gluing me to the wooden boards was pulled apart.

Darkness.

How long had I been unconscious? It must have been hours. I was lucky nothing had stumbled over the caravan while I'd been out. Being caught unawares in my sleep was not something I wanted to repeat any time soon.

I shifted my hooves about, knocking into the scattered tins and bottles. After a brief search, which included plenty of false positives, I found another healing potion and downed it. I lay down for a little longer, to give it time to work. After a few minutes of lying there, feeling the various pains ebb away, I summoned the strength to find my way to the back of the wagon and half-climb, half-fall out onto the tarmac.

It had been mid-afternoon when we'd hit the caravan. Now, it was evening, quickly getting on towards dusk. The grey cloud cover overhead was streaked with brownish-yellows and muddy reds.

 I begin stumbling around, checking the bodies of the others. More for something to do than anything else. If they hadn't cut my throat in the few hours I'd been unconscious, they were dead. Couldn't have happened to nicer ponies.

I found Shears' body first, crumpled on the ground. She'd been running away when she'd been shot. Typical. All talk, no guts. I regarded her contemptuously for a moment. That smug, self-satisfied face, with its 'twist-the-blade' smirk…

I lifted my forelegs and brought my hooves stamping down on her head. There was a crunch. Then I was smashing my hooves into her corpse, again and again. I don't know how many times I hit the body before I stopped and stepped away to inspect the result. Again, I don't know how long I stared at the broken corpse, watching the blood slowly seeping from the gashes, looking at the exposed patches of bone beneath a sheen of gore.

“Bitch,” I muttered as I turned away at last.

Ember was still lying where I'd last seen him, outstretched hoof just touching his rifle. Verdict, minus a considerable amount of brain matter, was nearby. One by one, I staggered to their bodies and did nothing but stare, snort, shake my head and leave them lying there.

When I'd finished, I slumped to my haunches in the middle of the road. Even my brief wander around the wagon had drained me of my strength. My head was pounding, my flank was sore from the first bullet I'd caught, I had scratches and grazes from where I'd dragged myself across the tarmac and the minor wound to my hindleg was starting to ache.

But I was alive, which is more than could be said for everypony else present.

I spent a few minutes picking over the wagon and the bodies that lay scattered around, stopping every now and then as the pain in my head resurged. I eventually decided to take the sub-machine gun from the body of my first kill. I at least knew how to use it. Point, pull trigger until the banging stops, reload and repeat. Maintenance, I couldn't do. I ripped a strap of leather from the dead pony's barding and used it to fashion a strap for the gun, letting it hang around my neck. I salvaged my saddlebag from where I'd dumped it at the side of road before the hit and filled it with spare ammo for my new gun, two healing potions I liberated from the wagon and whatever water and food I could find. Never pass up an opportunity for salvage.

It was only when I'd finished, picking up my lance from where I'd discarded it, that I stopped and fell back to my haunches.

I was alone now.

In the Equestrian Wasteland, that was synonymous with 'stupid', 'suicidal' and a whole lot of other horrible words. Like 'prey'.

For the first time, there was no-pony to order me around, put me down and beat down on me when they were bored.

And I didn't have a fucking clue what to do.

I pressed a hoof to the aching spot on my head, feeling the raw scar tissue that followed a curved path across my skull, just above my eye.

My first instinct was to find the feather-brain who'd shot me and force-feed him his own wings. But I was in no shape to wrestle a foal, let alone go pick a fight with somepony who'd killed me once already.

With a sigh, I turned and set my hooves walking in the direction of 'home' – the gang's camp.

What else could I do? The nearest settlement was New Appleloosa, which had been harassed by the gang in the past. We hadn't always managed to take the caravans we'd attacked, and there could be any number of ponies out there who'd recognise me for a 'raider'. Especially covered in blood as I was.

I managed about three hundred yards before the pain in my hindleg got too much to bear. I stumbled to a halt and dropped my saddlebag. I rooted through it for the healing bandages I'd left in them. The gang had always expected – read 'forced' – me to do all the miscellaneous patching up they always needed, on account of being the youngest and newest member for a long while. Then they'd bitch and complain when they went out scavenging again and the bandage came loose.

It took longer than I'd like to admit to get the bandage – threadbare and dirtied as it was – tied around the wound. The exertion made my head pound and I had to sit down for a few minutes afterwards.

I hated feeling weak.

The pre-twilight gloom was darkening fast into night. No-pony with sense stayed abroad in the Wasteland after dark; either you grabbed a light and made yourself a beacon for every zombie, bloatsprite and raider for miles or you stumbled blindly into a patch of radiation or taint or just fell into a ditch and broke your legs. With that in mind, I forced myself onto my hooves and pressed onwards.

Before I'd made the halfway point, the grey haze was clouding my vision again. I narrowly avoided tumbling headlong down a steep incline and followed that up byactually tumbling down the gentler slope I diverted to. I lay at the bottom for a moment, catching my breath. As I clambered to my hooves, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I froze and turned my head towards it. Between a pair of gnarled trees, a pony-shaped silhouette stood. For a moment, we both stood there, watching each other.

Then the other pony let out a raspy moan.

“Oh, for fuck's sake…” I muttered. I sank to my haunches and wearily watched the zombie as it approached. It was a particularly gruesome specimen; somepony had evidently recently shot it more than a few times. One leg was bent at an absurd angle, the zombie ignoring the cracking it made every time it put its weight on it and its eye socket had been smashed open, the eyeball hanging down its face on a strand of sinew. Only its freaky regenerating powers were keeping it up and mobile.

It reached me and managed to rear up on its hindlegs and let out a feeble growl. I threw myself forwards, driving my forehooves into its chest. It fell onto its back, weakly slapping at me with its hooves. I pinned it down with one hoof and raised the other above its face.

“I,” I said, slamming the hoof into its muzzle. “Amnot.” I hit it again. “Beingkilled.” And again. “Byyou!” It stopped struggling and lay still. “Bitch!” I finished with one last stamp to the face.

I stepped off the zombie's corpse and sat down again, panting. I could feel all of my legs trembling from exhaustion and adrenaline. After a minute or so of heavy breathing, I stood up and kept walking.

The pounding on the inside of my skull increased with every step.

I had never been happier to see the squalid little camp that was 'home'.

It was a collection of small wooden cabins, dilapidated and borderline ruinous from decades of neglect. A few ramshackle shacks had been erected by the more enterprising members of the gang that were just as cold, draughty and vermin-infested as the original cabins. The camp was nestled in a dip in the landscape, which kept off the worst of the wind and kept it hidden from wandering zombies and raiders. A small pen for prisoners had been bashed together against the wall of the largest building. Ember knew somepony down south who paid good caps for them.

I suddenly realised that I was lying down. When had I decided to do that?

I forced myself to my hooves, took one step forward and retched. The taste of stomach acid, whiskey and half-digested food filled my mouth as I spat out a bitter wad of puke.

Another step, another rush of nausea and fatigue.

Step by step, I staggered to the particularly run-down cabin that I'd claimed for my own. I slumped against the door, my laboured breathing doing nothing to replenish my strength. I couldn't even raise a hoof to push the door open. I ended up ramming my head against it, the thump sending a bolt of pain searing into my brain. The misshapen door stuck on the warped wooden floorboards, forcing me to repeat myself twice more, accompanied by a groan that slipped between my lips. It probably would have looked fucking hilarious, had it not left a smear of gore across the door as I forced my way in.

As I took the last few steps towards my makeshift bed, I shrugged off my saddlebag and threw my lance aside. The lifting of weight made me feel light-headed as my muscles loosened up slightly, the sudden relief of pain rushing up my neck and settling across my mind like a warm shroud, only adding to my weariness.

I fell headlong onto my mattress, weakly drawing the threadbare blanket over myself, not bothering to try and remove my barding. Within seconds, I was drifting into unconsciousness.

Maybe I'd never wake up.

At least it would simplify things.

Level Up: You have reached level 2!

Quest perk obtained: Bury Me Not

When the Grim Reaper came a-knockin’ on your door, you made sure the house was rigged to blow. Now, with a clean slate and a narrow escape to your name, you have the chance for a fresh start.

Effect: Karma is reset. All faction reputations reset. In addition, you may alter your starting traits.

Trait Selected: Savagery

Blood! Guts! More blood! More guts! Rip and tear!

Effect: You gain 20% damage to all unarmed and melee attacks, but suffer minor karma loss for each kill made with unarmed and melee attacks. In addition, your Charisma is reduced by 1.

Trait Selected: Book Dumb

REQ: INT < 8

Bah! Screw those eggheads with their reading and their abstract conceptualisation! Real ponies buck their problems!

Effect: You may not use skill books or magazines. Changes dialogue options. You may not take the following perks: Comprehension, Educated, Retention. You gain +5% Damage Resistance for every point of Intelligence under 8, up to a maximum of 20%.

New Perk Gained: Intense Training

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Now, if only it didn't hurt so much…

Effect: +1 Endurance